In other words you don' t have Jupiter to protect you this time around? Well you have two arms

It is awfully difficult to envision what is going on here without the charts. Mars is a bit troubling, but the 6th house isn't limited to injuries and illnesses. It has to go with people we hire (servants), small animals and other things. The trick is to find out what is going on in the life that is shown by the return. Also if there are no progressions or directions that are close to perfection this year, this may not indicate anything. What does the nativity "promise" and is there anything in the progressions or directions that indicate it will happen this year?

Ruler of 1 in 10 often means honors coming the native. I hope you don't get an award for an injury. Maybe you'll be a heroine. Study the nativity to determine its promise then apply that to the return and see what you come up with.

Some astrologers read solar returns alone, as a natal. Of course it is not literally a natal chart.

This is true but I don't believe many do this. If we believe that the nativity contains the potential of the life, it makes no sense to me to ignore it.

Dolly:

Something occurred to me last night about delineating solar returns. Ibn Ezra, Morin, I think Abu Mashar, I haven't taken the plunge into Ben Dykes latest translation just yet to confirm, and probably others, stress the importance of establishing the ruler of the year from the solar return. Unfortunately each astrologer above does it a bit differently. Ibn Ezra's method is the most unambiguous and maybe the easiest, if you have the software or the inclination to work out the primary direction of the ASC.

He says to direct the ASC to the relevant year and see if any planet in the solar return aspects that point. If a planet aspects it, that planet is the ruler of the year along with the bound ruler of that point. If there is no aspect, then just use the bound ruler. I'm pretty sure when he says "aspect," he means "perfection" during the year in question. Although I haven't tried it, we might be able to do the same thing with the progressed ASC. Then you look at what the ruler(s) of the year promise in the nativity and apply that to the SR and look for the same sort of thing.

I did try this with my son's chart. I directed his ASC (Naibod key) to this year and no planet in aspect to it. It is in the bounds of Venus. It had been in the bounds of Venus for a few years by 2010. And I noticed when the ASC changed bounds to Venus, he married. I'm going to do some more with this and see where it leads.

Whoops! That's not what I meant, but thanks for pointing out my poor choice of words. I now get a chance to explain myself. I only meant that the concept of choosing a ruler of the year from the solar return chart was common to those three and probably others. Therefore the concept is important. How that ruler is chosen by each varies. In other words using the rules of each one would possibly yield three different rulers.

That sort of thing used to bother me. That is, that everyone agrees with the concept but chooses different techniques to uncover it. No more. Each astrologer has his own view of what that ruler is and does so it only makes sense that they would choose differently. I "highlighted" Ibn Ezra's method because it is simple - far simpler than Morin's - and I can't think of a reason why it couldn't be done with the progressed ASC as well as the directed ASC. I'm not arguing that his is better or worse than any other idea. Thanks again.

Tony Louis' book on Solar Returns is a good overview of various techniques, traditional and modern, including, but not limited to Morin.

I have to disagree with Tom in this point. My review of this book is that it is poorly writen and mostly focused on modern astrology. The parts that are focused on Morin show that he has a poor grasp on the subject of morinian analysis: yes, he talks a little bit, but he reads a chart using modern astrology only. Besides Morin, he doesn´t show real grasp on any other traditional authority. To me it was a waste of money.

For instance, Solar returns: formulas and analyses by Nance McCullough was a much better buy, and she is a completely modern astrologer, but with more insights into real practice. I have the feeling that Tony Louis never used SR until he decided to write a book about them! The lack of examples of real clients and predictions is usually a red flag.

JuliYvonne:

Quote:

Some astrologers read solar returns alone, as a natal. Of course it is not literally a natal chart.

well, we can always found astrologers who will do something, of course :-)

If you want to take SR strictly from the modern perspective, yes, most of them only take the SR chart as a stand alone technique, or they will say to compare with the natal chart, without clarifying how to do it, with a quick example at the end of the book (with few exceptions like the book of McCullough quoted above).

But if one want to take the modern perspective, one should at least be aware that solar returns are one the most old techniques on the book, and they were never used as stand alone charts. And most modern writers, have never in contact with the ancient ideas on the topic, and never tested them, and pretty much re-invented the wheel from scratch.

In fact, even the way that Morin uses it (the ruler of SR 10th on the first) seems to be pretty much a renaissance technique. The more you go into the past, the more the SR seems to be used agains techniques of progressing the nativity, usually acting as a modificator of the natal promise.

Quote:

and I can't think of a reason why it couldn't be done with the progressed ASC as well as the directed ASC

[color=darkblue]Whoops! That's not what I meant, but thanks for pointing out my poor choice of words. I now get a chance to explain myself. I only meant that the concept of choosing a ruler of the year from the solar return chart was common to those three and probably others. Therefore the concept is important. How that ruler is chosen by each varies. In other words using the rules of each one would possibly yield three different rulers.

Now is MY turn to clarify. I meant the the ruler of the year is the profected ascendant of the natal not SR. If the profected house in the natal is the 11th house in Virgo, then Virgo in the SR and Mercury will highlight friends in relation to where Virgo and Mercury are in the SR.

Tom and others: there were several chronocrators or time rulers that astrologers of earlier times would pay particular attention to when judging an annual revolution. The term ruler of the directed ascendant and/or hyleg is one, the ruler (or lord) of the year is another. All the Arabic authors I have seen so far, and later European authors building on their works, use 'ruler of the year' to refer to the ruler of the profected ascendant, as has already been said.

Interestingly, a more complex Persian method of selecting the ruler of the year has been preserved in India. It is not unlike the procedure for determining the hyleg. The Indian authors also mention the simpler method of always taking the ruler of the profected ascendant, stating that this is used by the 'Romans' (meaning the Byzantine Greeks), and that it is done using the tropical zodiac. (The inference is that the other, Persian method used the sidereal zodiac.)

If you're talking about profections, he mentions them disparagingly. From the Translator's Preface;

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However, he (Morin) begins Book 24 with a lengthy diatribe against what he calls "progressions," by which he means both methods using equal degrees for years or months and methods using the elaborate systems set forth by the Arabian astrologers ... These systems are properly called profections.

Italics in the original

And from the man himself:

Quote:

Progressions were only devised for one purpose, that with their help the days of accidents might be determined. Moreover, when the human intellect, having forsaken the light of reason, loosens the reins to [accept] fictions, it is marvelous how much it runs riot in these, as is apparent in the doctrine of progressions ...

For me too profection should be seen before solar return and gives the lord of the year.

Yes profections are very important to traditional technique. I have found them one of the most reliable methods in predictive astrology and they have a lot of scope in rectification work. I asume Morin's rejection of profections was a reflection of his distrust of symbolism in contrast to naturalistic indicators. From what I can see Morin seeks to replace profections with lunar returns which assume a larger significance in his approach.

Regarding profections I tend to work with them whole sign rather than the later idea of 30 degrees. Interestingly Ben Dykes uses the whole sign method himself rather than the approach taught by Robert Zoller found in many medieval and renaissance texts.

Mark_________________‘’As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity…’’ William Lilly

Still, I suppose Morin was sticking to his distrust of symbolism in contrast to naturalistic indicators.

It isn't simple distrust. It is a profound difference in philosophy. Astrology, in his view, was part of nature. If it didn't exist in nature, it, therefore shouldn't exist in astrology.

The Arab authorities were clever and came up with a plethora of techniques based on their worldview and math, but Ben Dykes points out the difficulties this approach can present:

Quote:

Possibly one should borrow from horary practice and make her [the Moon]a co-significator in all revolutions just as in questions. On the other hand, this advice seems almost useless, given that the Persian suite of techniques has already got a profection, a Lord of the Year, a distribution and its partner, and Ascendant of the year and its Lord, transits, pairs of firdariyyah Lords and ninth parts. How does the Moon fit in here?

He left some out. For example Abu Mashar uses three(!) ascendants (nativity, revolution, profection) and their Lords. There is an old gag that if one did everything Abu Mashar suggested in the delineation, it would take an entire year to complete the job. There is more than a little truth in that line.

Morin however limits himself to what is in nature. If we put his bombast aside, there is something compelling about his thinking.

Quote:

From what I can see Morin seeks to replace profections with lunar returns which assume a larger significance in his approach.

I don't see it that way. Morin presents us with a hierarchy. Nativity, directions, solar return, lunar return, and transits. If memory serves Lily takes this approach as well. Once the revolution is cast, we can cast all the lunar returns for the year and see which one(s) most closely interact with the solar return and that will be the month where the promise is realized. The transits pinpoint things to the day. In reality, things rarely work out this well.

Also Morin is adamant (is he ever any other way?) about casting the revolutions of the Sun and Moon for the location of the native at the time of the revolution. If one doesn't know where one will be six months from now, how does one cast the chart? He doesn't say.

Still despite his near incoherence on selection of the Lord of the year, his approach has at least as much validity as any other and we get to dispense with some of the minutiae.

Ummm it seems that this might have been a good day to keep things to myself. I mentally transposed a couple of things regarding Morin and Lord of the year. His "near incoherence" does not occur when explaining the concept in revolutions, but rather in the Aries Ingress in book 25. I was flipping through volume 23 on revolutions trying to find his method of selection when it hit me what I had done.

I did find something and I'm posting it in order to attempt to undo some of the confusion I probably caused. Plus I found something interesting that is somewhat relevant.

I found no description of how to find the Lord of the Year in the revolution, but I found a reference to it in one of the charts under discussion. Morin was explaining the revolution that occurred prior to the death of Cardinal Richelieu. In that delineation he noted that Mercury was the Lord of the year as well as the Lord of the ASC. This indicates that Lord ASC of the revolution isn't simply the default choice. In this chart, Mercury was in Virgo, so very strong, and ruled the ASC, MC and the Sun. I found no other planet in the relevant chart that might be considered quite so strong.

This method is similar to the method Lilly teaches to nominate the Lord of the Geniture. Similar but not identical. In this chart Mercury is in the 12th house. Lilly would have looked elsewhere. But the Lord of the geniture is a planet we can choose to work with. The ruler of a revolution is going to influence what will happen to the native during the year, in the case at hand, kill him.

Now irony of ironies. Early on in Book 23 Morin sings the praises of one of his sources for his opinions on revolutions. He cites the great work on the subject by Hermes the Philosopher. The Joke is on Morin. The translator in a footnote informs us that the text Morin referred to was actually written by Abu Mashar. His opinion might have been altered had he known that. Morin did not accept the work on profections of course, but other doctrines like repetition of the nativity in the solar return indicating the thing promised would occur that year, are prominent in Morin's work. Morin also studied, but was critical of much of Cardan's work on Revolutions. Still he was probably influenced by it.
He would be less likely to direct through the bounds as he preferred directing in mundo to in zodiac.

If this discussion is going to continue in this vein, perhaps we ought to take it to the traditional Forum.

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